


Good and Good Enough

by Yeah_JSmith



Series: Ruff Stuff [1]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: AU, Emotions, Established Relationship, F/M, Guilt, Light BDSM, Negotiations, Praise Kink, Protective Judy Hopps, Smut, Spanking, Trust, demisexual Nick Wilde, enough feelings to make you sick, so many stupid emotions, unconventional aftercare, yellow conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 15:15:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13250919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: Judy and Nick get closer, in more ways than one, while her neighbors are away. One of these days they'll get out of their own heads, but for now, this is just fine.





	Good and Good Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I did a smut one-off. I can't believe it. I _almost_ decided not to post it, but what the hell, if people don't like it my life won't be ruined. Not even my day. But I hope that someone (aside from me) will enjoy it. This fandom has a severe lack of SSC, negotiated kink.
> 
> This universe in a nutshell: Judy, who is 22, got an academic scholarship to Zootopia University instead of going to a regional school for Criminology. She met Nick, who is 4 years older instead of 8, and they became friends through a series of hilarious events. Judy still lives in the Grand Pangolin Arms and has a retail job at Targoat to pay for rent/food/etc. Nick is still a street con but Judy talked him into registering as a CI. Nick’s self-esteem issues are firmly intact, but at this point in the “story” they’re working on it, and he’s discovering more about her. I have an entire detailed back-story for this particular scene, even though it’s a one-off. Which, if you know me at all, should not come as a surprise.
> 
> [Ruff Stuff, the Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFsMzmYsLKfO4D5y1PUHlsn_epYk4ROpn)

Nick was an old paw at sneaking into places he shouldn’t be, but this was the first time he’d had to pick a lock upon invitation. It was kind of thrilling to be doing it, even though Judy was expecting him and was probably tapping her foot anxiously while he dithered outside the door to her cereal box of an apartment, trying to figure out which tension wrench would work best. He considered making her wait just for the fun of it, but he was as excited as she probably was, so he just got on with the lock and opened the door, pleased that he could still do it at all. It had been a long time since he’d needed to.

Sure enough, she was waiting for him, foot a-tap-tap-tapping, arms crossed over her chest. She was still in her presentation outfit, a pair of fitted chalk-stripe pants and a green blouse with pearl buttons, and honestly she didn’t belong in this scathole of an apartment, but there they were. 

Her neighbors, Bucky and Pronk, were away at some kind of music festival, so Nick had taken the opportunity to arrange a session. It wasn’t often that they got quiet time; it wasn’t that they  _ couldn’t  _ do anything when the neighbors were around, but their interruptions made Nick want to kick something. Tonight,  _ finally,  _ they would be able to get through everything with no obscene commentary.

Not that the obscenity was  _ embarrassing,  _ or anything. Nick was definitely too cool for that. He was always in control, passive behind a deceptively expressive mask. Except, you know, when he wasn’t. But whatever. 

“I thought you could do that in less than twenty seconds. You told me you would,” she said smugly. Little scat.

“Yeah, well, your door locks are the stuff of nightmares. You know why this place never gets robbed?”

“Because we’re an awesome community,  _ which you should join?” _

He pretended not to be flattered at the old taunt. He could move in with her, if he wanted, but he wasn’t ready to give up his own space, as...under-a-bridge as it might be. Nick shook his head and moved closer, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “Nobody has anything worth trying to break down a door for.”

She pushed him back playfully, and he hoped that the brief flash of emotion on her face hadn’t been hurt. He had plenty of experience hurting her, but he didn’t want to keep saying things that cut her. The whole point of all of this was to get past that. Be constructive. 

“I, uh.” He scratched his neck self-consciously. “Are you still...up for what we discussed?”

After a careful glance meant to ascertain something Nick apparently wasn’t privy to, Judy answered, “Yes, I am, if you are. We should...um. We should start. Or you should, or.”

It was funny how she could stumble like this in private and then take oral exams like she’d been born to do it. It was funny how they  _ both  _ stumbled when they both knew what they wanted. Nick was usually a consummate actor, though. He could carry them into something more natural.

He made a show of pulling his belt off loop by loop, reveling in the knowledge that he could still make her eyes go wide and her nose twitch. Even if he couldn’t usually tell what she was thinking, he could always tell what she was feeling. She wanted this as much as he did. Just the sound of cork leather on stiff fabric was erotic, knowing where this was going next – there was anticipation, too, Nick was almost  _ salivating  _ at the thought of the way it would  _ crack  _ against bare fur – and by the time his belt was finally off, Judy had darn near chewed a layer of skin off her lower lip.

He folded the belt into a loop and tested the new leather against the wood of her desk. The sharp sound had her gasping. He wouldn’t have heard it had her neighbors been home.

He gave the belt to her and moved to pull off his pants and underwear, watching out of the corner of his eye as she caressed the leather. She always looked so deceptively fragile, but she was unbreakable. He knew this from watching her train from afar, the way she’d saved him from –

Not tonight. Tonight no one else existed.

He tossed his shirt to the side and faced her fully, finally able to appreciate how liberating it felt to be vulnerable in front of someone who wasn’t. Her clothes were still on, but he didn’t mind. No matter what she wore or didn’t wear, it never felt like there was pressure to perform.

“Down,” she said, and Nick dropped to his knees eagerly, resting his paws on his thighs. He loved it when she talked to him before their sessions. She valued his input, which was a novelty even outside of things like this. She considered him for a moment, and then said, “Tell me why we’re doing this.”

Any of a number of things could be  _ a  _ right answer, but he knew what the real answer was. He nodded and kept his eyes on his knees. “Because I asked for it.”

And that was the truth. Judy had never kept her desires a secret, exactly, but she had never seemed inclined to act upon them. Nick had been the one to take initiative. He’d broached the subject over lunch almost a year ago, enjoying watching her squirm and try to deflect. She was never squeamish about sex, but Nick got the feeling that she was still somewhat afraid of the implications of her particular kinks. He didn’t see why; she was a good domme, a good lover, and a  _ great  _ friend, and did anything else really matter? 

“Good boy,” she said, and the casual statement crashed into him with inordinate intensity. Until Judy, nobody had ever called him anything but shifty. Nobody had cared to look further than the surface, not that he’d have let them. But for all his many,  _ many  _ faults, Judy called him good. And when she did, she meant it. She lifted his muzzle with the paw that still held his belt in a loop, and he shivered in either fear or want. Maybe both. “Why did you ask for it this time?”

He kept his eyes trained on hers, memorizing the look in them. Despite having the mannerisms down, Judy still sometimes looked conflicted – as though her ability to dominate depended on his answers. Maybe it did. She was a natural at the  _ acts,  _ and she certainly liked her power. One day he’d get the story out of her. 

But tonight, that wasn’t the point. “I did something...pretty wretched. Not  _ go directly to jail  _ bad, but I think the collateral damage might have serious consequences.”

“For whom?”

“My mother, actually.”

Judy was aware of the nature of Nick’s job. She also knew, and was on terrifyingly good terms with, his mother. He’d tried to chase her off using the darker aspects of his business, but it was hard to intimidate someone who could mop the floor with him and had decent relations with Mr. Big. Judy seemed fearless, but that was a carefully cultivated mask she used to trick herself. Moments like these were as valuable to her as they were to him, because they could be emotionally vulnerable together. So he had no reason to hide his indiscretions from her, either, since his business was morally questionable but still technically legal.

Unsurprisingly, her eyes narrowed and she gripped his muzzle with her paw instead of just keeping it up with the belt. “What happened to her?”

Her protective streak was a mile wide and several miles long, more of a puddle than a streak. Ruth Wilde was not an easy vixen to get along with, but when Judy put her mind to something, she achieved it; she’d put her mind to a friendship with Nick’s mother, and there was no power on Earth that could stop her when she was on a mission of love.

No, really. Ruth hadn’t known what’d hit her. 

Nick took a deep, calming breath. This  _ was  _ what he’d come for. Guilt was a funny thing; once you allowed it space for the first time, it never went away until you felt...absolved, or forgiven, or something like that. Forgiveness had seemed impossible until Judy had stormed into his life, taken him by the paw, and taught him how to feel again. He needed this. Life was  _ better  _ like this. “Jimmy Brown’s boys had a chat with her.”

For a moment, the pressure around his muzzle was genuinely painful, but only for a moment, after which Judy got hold of herself again. “Why?”

“I got stupid.” He frowned and shook his head, knowing she would stop this whole thing if he degraded himself. “No, that’s not right. I’m not a stupid mammal. I got careless. Maybe even cocky. Somebody found out that I’m a CI, or they’re trying to figure out whether or not I am. And so...I prioritized the job over her. I didn’t report it. I didn’t – I  _ don’t  _ know what the right thing is, but I have a feeling that I didn’t do it in any case. I put my mother in danger, but if I hadn’t, she’d probably be in danger  _ anyway,  _ and I don’t even like her. Honestly, I have no idea why you do. But...she’s my mom. She got hurt because of me.”

“Nick, I…” She stroked his headfur with her free paw, a comparatively gentle caress that made his eyes fall halfway shut. “Try to be objective for a minute. Don’t turn off your feelings, but maybe...put your actions on me. If I’d done what you did, would I deserve to be punished?”

“I don’t know if this is something you’d  _ do.  _ You always do the right thing.”

“Okay, first, that’s not true. I mess up a lot.” Her gentle petting continued, even though her words were stern. He liked the dichotomy. It was comforting, almost stable. “Second, whether or not it’s the right thing is beside the point. Let’s say I made this mistake – and I’m still not clear on the details, so I can’t tell you if it  _ was  _ a mistake, but we’re saying it is for the purposes of this exercise – would I deserve to be punished for it?”

“No.” He tried to look away, but she wouldn’t let him, and for the first time that night he felt uncomfortable. He hoped it wouldn’t be the last time. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“Then why do you think  _ you  _ do?”

“Because it’s not my first time doing dumb stuff that hurts other mammals,” he said sharply, at more of a growl than he’d intended. Judy had a way of getting to him, getting under his fur, that nobody else did. It was easy to talk to mammals who didn’t care about him. It was easy not to lash out at them,  _ because  _ they didn’t care about him. The truth was, he still didn’t know how to be liked. He was still uncomfortable with being appreciated, let along loved. This – this thing with Judy – was something he could lose, and losing her would  _ mean  _ something, and everything came out in a great, jumbled rush. “It’s not just this. It’s not  _ just  _ anything, any time we do this. It’s always this  _ plus  _ the rest of my stupid mistakes, this  _ plus  _ the things I can never take back. There are mammals I’ve hurt that I don’t even know about! I don’t know their names, their faces, how much they’ve lost because of me...I’m selfish – don’t deny it, Carrots, I  _ know  _ I am, and  _ you  _ know I am. You wouldn’t deserve to be punished because you don’t have a history of irreparable harm. You learn from your mistakes. I just...keep doing the same dumb scat over and over.”

“Red,” she said quietly, and he huffed, but didn’t object. He’d never used a safeword before, had never felt the need to, but he understood the reason for having one, at least. “Or yellow. Yield. Slow down for a moment.”

He snorted in spite of his emotional malaise. “You sure you want to be a detective? You sound like a traffic cop.”

“And you sound like a brat, but I’m pretty sure that’s intentional.” Judy pulled him into a soft hug. Compared to him, she was so  _ small.  _ Their height difference was almost absurd, but he never felt like he towered over her. Her presence was too big to be contained. “I hate it when you talk about yourself like this, Nick. I thought we were past it. That was what all of this was supposed to be about.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, allowing her scent to overwhelm everything else. Maybe he had a few things to admit that he’d never considered. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be past it. I always feel better after one of our sessions, but I  _ never  _ feel like I’ve made up for the things I did before we started. It’s not your fault, it’s just...even when I let go, I never  _ let go.” _

“You want to reach subspace,” she concluded, or perhaps suggested.

He nodded, feeling the brush of his head against her chest. Maybe if he didn’t open his eyes, it wouldn’t be so humiliating. “I think so, yeah.”

“Well we can’t do that tonight.”

He opened his eyes and pulled away so he could look at her. She didn’t seem contemptuous or disgusted or any of the things he’d imagined she might feel, but she didn’t seem comfortable, either. Reluctantly, he told her, “We don’t have to try at all, if you don’t want to.”

“No,  _ no,  _ I do. I want to. I just wish…” She gave him a small, awkward smile. “I wish I could help you  _ now.  _ I wish there were some magic word or something that could just show you what I see when I look at you. I don’t love you for no reason. I wouldn’t love you if you weren’t worth the world. So we’ll keep trying. We’ll set up a session where we try to get you to that place. Someday I hope you’ll like yourself as much as I like you, but until then...I guess I’ll just keep loving you the way you want to be loved.”

His mouth was wet, or dry, he wasn’t certain. It was a heady rush to be told these things, to hear her say  _ love  _ so casually, as though it were irrefutable fact. Another, stronger mammal might have cried at the surge of  _ feelings,  _ but Nick still wasn’t sure how to do that. He felt like he was going to collapse. “You’re so good to me.”

“I try,” she replied, laughing. Her voice was suspiciously thick. “Now, because we’re still paused, let me ask you something. Knowing we’re not going to try for subspace, do you still want a spanking? I think tonight it wouldn’t be punitive, it would just be the fun kind.”

If he said no, the answer would be no. She had always been strict about that.  _ Nick  _ decided when enough was enough. He said stop and he said go. In other words, he decided how much power he was willing to lend her, and for how long. She was always so careful with it that sometimes he felt like giving it all to her. As harsh a mistress as she could be, she always treated him better than he treated himself. It was a funny kind of love – certainly not the kind the Nocturnal District tried to push in movies and television – but, Nick thought, a better kind. It was realer than long, wet kisses with closed eyes and exaggerated moans, realer than bodies rutting mechanically under plain white sheets and careful lighting.

If he said no, the answer would be no. But the answer wasn’t no. It would probably never be no, not because of his conscience or his guilt or even his limited libido, but because he loved her and he loved everything they did together and he loved the way she took charge. He could only imagine how majestic she’d look putting some scumbag in pawcuffs.

“I still want it. I want to have fun with you. You know me, I’m insatiable.”

“All right, then. Green?”

“Green,” he agreed. She let go of him and drew herself up into something stiffer and more commanding.  _ God,  _ she was beautiful.

“Up,” she said. “Get on the bed.”

The commanding tone never failed to surprise him, nor did the way his body reacted to it, obeying without conscious thought or effort. The authority in her voice overrode everything else, shut down any objections he might have had with anybody who wasn’t Judy Hopps. He had his chest pressed flat against her mattress, feet shoulder width apart, before he consciously processed the command.

“Good boy,” she said, and there was that rush again. As embarrassing as it was, he didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing that. “What do you want, Nick?”

“Is ten minutes too long?”

“You tell me.” He could hear her amusement. Rude. “Is ten minutes too long to be  _ pleasurable?” _

Oh, he thought, it ought to be a  _ crime  _ for her to say that word in that tone. It had him close to panting and they hadn’t even begun. “I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”

“Fair enough,” she told him, and whatever response he might have had dried up in his mouth when her paw swung down to make contact.

Judy had her weak spots, but this wasn’t one of them. Every time felt like the first time, thrilling and slightly terrifying. Like this, she had the power, even if it was only temporary and artificial. Like this, she could harm him – not just hurt him, but legitimately  _ harm  _ him – and he just had to trust her not to. Maybe it said something about him that pain was easier to trust than gentle affection, but whatever that might be was too slippery a thought to hold onto when her small paw kept up precise, rhythmic strikes.

His soft, chesty whine would have been embarrassing in any other situation, but in  _ this  _ one, he couldn’t bring himself to care how obscene he sounded.

Her thirtieth strike – or maybe twenty-ninth, or thirty-second, or  _ oh hell,  _ he didn’t want to count them anyway – was hard enough to make him wobble, but he dug his claws into her sheets and widened his stance a little to keep his balance. She slowed her pace, but that only made it easier for her to hit harder, using her intimate knowledge of his body and physics to appropriately distribute the weight of the strikes. She knew exactly how that would affect him. He groaned without his own permission, the stinging sensation expanding into something more pleasurable, and when she moved her paw down to his thighs it sent a  _ jolt  _ right through him. He dug the claws on his feet into the carpet as well. Nick hadn’t thought that he’d be aroused like this, at least not so  _ soon,  _ but it had been a while and he was pent-up and her strikes were heavy and  _ amazing  _ and he opened his mouth to tell her so, but what came out was,  _ “Please.” _

“Please what,” she asked, stilling her paw. He didn’t whimper, but only because he had such a firm grip on her bedsheets.

“Please hit me harder.”

“You want me to use the belt?”

_ “God,  _ yes,” he said, glad that he hadn’t had to put it into words. He was always uncomfortable asking for favors, and while sometimes Judy got a kick out of making him express his desires, tonight she didn’t seem inclined.

“I guess you  _ are  _ insatiable,” she teased with a slightly derisive laugh designed to make him moan. It worked. It always did. She never looked down on him, not really, but the illusion was enough. He heard the slide of cork leather and the jingle of the buckle. He could perfectly imagine the way she was looping it more tightly, making it easier for a rabbit-sized mammal to wield, and her next strike was a song against his fur.

Nick tried to lose himself in the bite of the belt, refusing to count the strikes. That was another method of control, which was the last thing he wanted. He wanted to be an object, a plaything,  _ mindless,  _ if he could manage it, anything to make his head quiet for a moment or two. It was no use trying to get to that point, not like this, but he didn’t have to try to stay present, either. Nobody was counting on him. His life and livelihood didn’t depend on his ability to think. All he needed to do was feel, and breathe, and want.

And  _ oh,  _ did he want.

A series of pointed strikes drew a short line from his biceps femoris to his semitendinosus, prompting a long whine he was almost proud of, seeing the way it made Judy gasp. He writhed even as he tried not to move, twisting without twisting, tension giving way to pleasure giving way to tension. He could feel himself, felt the tension in his testicles and the slow  _ drip  _ from his extended penis, and when she  _ finally  _ struck his gracilis he cried out for the first time in over two weeks. He couldn’t tell whether it was distress or delight. Maybe both. It didn’t matter. The belt bit into the sensitive skin behind his testicles and the groan it elicited was so dirty he might have wanted to hide, had he not been beyond caring. He was going to come right there  _ on the side of her bed  _ if they weren’t careful.

Fortunately, she seemed to sense this, because she dropped the belt and helped him stand, taking in his jelly legs with something that looked like concern. Probably. He was too high on endorphins to care, at any rate. He didn’t know if they’d gone the full ten minutes, and his head was fuzzy, and she smelled like magic or sunshine or something equally stupid and sickly sweet. Her paw was soft against his belly, just barely brushing against the head of his cock, and it – yeah, he was ready for her. He wasn’t always. It was difficult to get into that mindset, even knowing he could trust her, but opening up was easier with a little harsh encouragement.

Her voice neared imperious when she said, “Sit. If you can.”

He sat. With a yelp, sure, but he sat, scooted into a better position, planted his paws on his thighs, and stayed sitting on her bed, awaiting her next command. His eyes widened as she began slipping out of her clothes. She did not bother with a strip tease; her movements were routine, almost clinical. But removing her pants gave him a real nose-full of her scent, the bunny hormones that didn’t scream  _ sex  _ to any old fox but Nick had come to associate with that anyway. Not only were her lower scent-glands working overtime, but she was already wet enough that it was like they’d been touching each other all night. He wasn’t sure she could get any more perfect without ascending to godhood or...something, probably something stupid. 

He was still fuzzy. That was more than okay.

“Do you need a minute?”

“No,” he forced out, trying to focus on her. He was peripherally aware of the importance of what she called aftercare and he called humiliating, overwhelming attention that he secretly loved, but there was a time and place for everything, and this was the time and place for them to be touching, honestly, what was taking so long? “I want to feel you.”

She bent over and retrieved a fox-sized canid condom from her school bag, which – wow, she must have had  _ guts  _ to just go in and purchase something like that from a grocery store. He looked at it in confusion and she explained, “I don’t think either of us are in the mood for a serious clean-up.”

Fair enough.

She climbed onto the bed and knelt between his legs to roll the condom onto him, the sides of her mouth pulling into a sweet smile when he dug his claws into his own thighs. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

He snorted and said nothing, only waiting for her to take initiative. He never cared to start anything, even when he wanted it as badly as he did now. The truth was that the sex, as good as it tended to be, was incidental. He loved Judy with or without her body. She was good at handling him, but he didn’t need that to feel close to her. That was the best part. Knowing that they’d be good together even if they dried up and never got to feel this again.

And then there  _ was  _ this, the feeling of Judy kneeling across him, carefully pushing him down so that his head was comfortable on her pillow, dropping slowly onto him. She was too small for most other sex positions, but this way, he got to watch her move and she got to feel him writhe. His soft noise mingled with her quiet moan as she pressed against him, setting a slow pace he was  _ sure  _ was designed to tease him. She couldn’t be getting much out of it.

Hesitantly, he thrusted upward, clenching his stomach and cataloguing the feeling, the lingering throb of pain counterbalancing the sudden rush of sexual pleasure. Judy seemed to like it, which was surprising. He’d thought she preferred to keep control of everything. But maybe sometimes it was okay to take on some of the work. He thrusted again, his paws going to her hips. He massaged them as they rolled, in earnest now, and he wished she were taller or he were shorter so that he could bury his nose in her neck. But this was okay, this kind of raw intimacy that walked the line between rutting and what other, more sentimental mammals called making love. 

He moved his paw to thumb her clitoris, moving with her to keep the pressure, and she cried out like he had just a little while ago. Between sharp breaths and soft moans, she managed to say, “Talk to me, Nick.”

“You could wreck me,” he breathed, knowing that her big ears would catch it. She liked his voice, or at least she always told him that she did. It didn’t matter what he was saying; he could read the phone book in a certain tone and her eyes would begin to roam shamelessly. It was a bunny thing. “You could tear me to pieces or shove me off a cliff and I’d still be yours. Always yours. I belong to you, Judy,  _ Judy,  _ I-”

Her swift clench around him cut off his thought. Her hips flared as her knees moved slightly inward and her back arched, and the pressure was almost  _ unbearable  _ as he tried to thrust faster, and he stretched with time, spiraling sideways into the orgasm he hadn’t realized he’d been holding off for her. 

They breathed, and he ached.

Judy pulled up off of him and smiled softly before reaching for his baculum, giving him the stimulation he wasn’t always sure he could take. It felt strange to be kneaded through the condom like this, but as she got into a pattern he was only glad she’d thought to put it on him. His mouth fell open and he panted helplessly, overwhelmed, slowly leaving self-consciousness once again. What they couldn’t do for each other naturally, they had figured out how to do artificially, and he was pliant below her, and yeah, the condom had been a good idea, he didn’t want that mess in either of their fur, and the ceiling had swirls, and her paws were _so soft,_ and he could feel that he was going to have bruises in the morning, and he’d be sitting tenderly in public with the secret knowledge that he’d been thoroughly spanked, and –

“Come on, Nick, be a good boy,” she said, and that was that.

He took deep, stabilizing breaths as she pulled off the condom and wiped up the excess with a soft rag that she always replaced after sessions like these. She was thorough and careful here, so different to the way she threw herself into daily life. Cleanup was part of their process now, and although he’d been weirded out at first, he had come to appreciate her attention. She wanted to take care of him, and he wanted to let her.

As she curled up next to him, running her paws through the fur on his chest and his ruff, she said, “We can lie here for thirty minutes, but then we have to shower.”

So thorough. And honest, too. When she said shower, she meant it; no sex in the shower, just washing, an exercise in disinfecting he generally appreciated even as wrung out as he was now. He closed his eyes and wondered what he’d ever done to deserve this.

“Nick, please don’t – please talk to me. Do you need to turn over?”

He hated the anxiety in her voice. He didn’t really want to say anything – just wanted to lie there, soaking her in, enjoying the quiet in his head before the chatter started up again – but he didn’t want her to think he was shutting her out again. He supposed aftercare wasn’t just for one party. “I don’t need to turn over. I just want to be with you while everything feels okay.”

Very,  _ very  _ quietly, Judy asked, “Just okay?”

And after everything, the least he owed her was honesty, so he would be honest. “Yeah, just okay. But I felt wretched before. Okay is miles better than that.”

“Do...do you think someday you’ll be able to lie here and say that you’re happy?”

He pressed a kiss to the tip of her ear and grinned as she reached over and gripped his paw tightly. “I think so. I’m not happy right now, but I’m happy with you. That’s  _ kind  _ of a big deal.”

“Then,” she said, rubbing her chin over his knuckles, “okay is good enough.”

Nick lay there next to her, in love and in pain and in post-coital comfort, and thought she was right. Okay  _ was _ good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I will headcanon sub Nick and domme Judy until the day I die. Like they could have fun being totally vanilla, and they could have fun switching up their roles, because they could have fun watching paint dry as long as they were together. But in a dynamic, I imagine Nick would enjoy being able to let go and let someone else _that he trusted implicitly_ drive for a change, and Judy would enjoy a) being able to take care of him in this emotional/physical way, and b) having power over someone without worrying that she’ll do harm. I mean come on, don’t tell me the smug little blackmailer doesn’t like having power over others.


End file.
